Good and Bad.....

todays post is a combination of good and bad stories.........

Bad first- As many of you know I'm a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And I'm sure you guys also have heard that our dearly beloved Prophet Gordon B. Hinkley has passed away last Sunday due to incidents due to his age. He was 97. I'm sad about his passing but at the same time I'm grateful for the knowledge that I have that he's in a better place, with his beloved wife, and that his family and hopefully me will be able to one day see him again. What a great blessing is that!

On a personal level I saw him (in person) only once in my life. He just got called to be the President of the church at that time (1995) and he visited us in the Philippines. We had a huge conference which I volunteered to be an usher. I didn't get to shake his hand but he waved my way which was good enough for me. I love him cause he's such a powerful example of love, faith, humility and obedience. Everything he has done in his life has been the evidence of his faith and love for the gospel. What an amazing man of God!

And then to the good which really doesn't match up to the first half of this post but here's my happy news today........

this calendar that I posted pictures and instructions on in my January 5th post was accepted in the Basic Grey gallery today. Woohoo!

So there, hope you guys are having a good week so far.

Grace

rain, rain go away......

come again another day!!! but then again we here in SoCal NEED you so stay and water my garden some more. *wink*



Yup it's been raining pretty much all week around here. Gloomy both inside and outside my home. why so? well outside bec. of the obvious weather and inside cause I'm BURNT OUT!!!

Mitch was in Vegas the whole week at a construction convention and that means I was playing the single parent all this time. It's tough. I don't like sleeping alone with a tight grip on a pepper spray bottle and a baseball bat underneath my pillow; don't like the fact that I have to wake up at 6 am and DRAG (literally) the little kids to take Amanda to seminary; don't enjoy the 24 hour role of being a referree between the two little ones. Let me tell you having a 4 and 2 year old fight over EVERY SINGLE THING drives me BONKERS!!!
But there is a light at the end of the tunnel here cause Mitch is supposed to come home tonight. Yippeeee!!!

Another positive note- I got to SCRAP LIKE CRAZY this week. Didn't have to sleep at a certain time (although it would've been wise for me to) so as soon as the kids were in bed I was at my sb table watching late shows and "Legally Blonde" till I get tired or my brain can't function anymore. Got 7 pages done, most of them were 2 page spreads; a portfolio for a contest I'm entering and started on making some valentine decorations. Fun stuff!

So to end this post let me share one of my fave photography subject which (obviously) is getting tired of posing for me. What a little DIVA!!!


Have a great day,
Grace

freaking excited.......

learned this week that I have three layouts that's gonna be in the feb issue of scrapstreet and .....
and a mini album of mine was requested for SbTrends mini album book due to come out in April. THAT'S HUGE FOR ME......aaahhhhh!

Have a great weekend,
Grace

Got my camera out today

and decided to take pics of what's going on in my home today.
I've noticed that i've spent a lot of posts talking about crafty stuff so here's something for our family to enjoy. (I hope so!)
Here's Marcus and Maddie playing oh so nicely together. I have to say this has been a common thing lately. They have been getting along great and LOVES to play with each other. The only time they really fight is when there's only one of something and that means they have to share. Now isn't that a drag! LOL.
Next pic is our dining table moved from the corner of the kitchen to the middle. For the past four years weve had it in the corner (by the windows) and can only use three sides of it. We would always have to pull it out so that a fourth person can sit. Maddie's outgrown her high chair so I suggested we buy a new table which will be smaller in size but can sit all of us without the hassle of moving it around. Mitch thought that we just needed to swith the table around. I thought that would make the kitchen (which is already crowded) more crowded but one night this week he decided to prove me wrong and made the switcheroo. Well what do you know! He was right. I'm happy with the switch. The kitchen is still crowded but I like the fact that we can all sit together at dinner time and eat at the table. Now all I have to do is buy matching chairs (notice we have one odd chair) and a new set of placemats so we'll all match. *wink*

Third pic are my new eye glasses. This can count as my christmas gift of some sorts. I've had my old ones for about two years and having kids that can't keep their hands to themselves, it was on its last legs. It can barely stay on the face! So after christmas I got me some new pair. I went to walmart and was going through their frames. At first I wanted to look hip and cool. Hehehehehe but when I came across these frames that have a darker lens part that easily clips on your glasses, I knew I had to get it. I felt it was cheaper to get this one than to buy two pairs (one regular and the other w/ darker lens). I'm so happy I got this one. Money well spent, I say!

And last a quick photo of me with my new glasses and my fave accessory (my camera). :) The little dots you see in my face is the reflection of the mirror and the sunlight on the side.

Notice my big bandaged up thumb? Well got in a little accident yesterday while opening up a game for Marcus. I was trying to slit open the package and ended up carving my finger too. Ouch!!! Didn't hurt too bad at first but when I noticed that the blood didn't stop coming I was a little worried. Luckily we had really thick gauze in our first aid kit which did the trick. I couldn't even scrapbook at first cause the bandaids that I put on right after I cut myself couldn't hold the blood. It was seeping through the bandaids leaving blood marks all over my papers. AAaaaahhhhh!

Ok so enough of the gorry details of my booboo. Life is good here and hope it is with you too. :)

Have a great day,
Grace

My Mantra

In the January issue of Creating Keepsakes magazine (a famous scrapbook magazine) they had an article that struck me like a huge lightning bolt. It was all about mantras. In the article Mantra was defined as "your purpose statement- the underlying premise that drives you why you scrapbook". With that in mind I spent about a month searching deep within to find my "personal statement", the words that I will live by, a phrase that I would/should tell myself when things get too overwhelming or complicated.
And this is what I came up with........





I got this phrase while reading an article in a women's magazine. The article was talking about what women that have stayed at home with their kids for a long time should do when they finally go back to the work force. Of course I was all over that article since I'm now in that position. But when the author said that "you have to face the fact that you can't have them all and that remember that progress not perfection is what you need to strive for". After reading that phrase, I knew that's what I NEED to strive for.

So this year and hopefully the years to come, here's my personal statement not only about scrapbooking but in my life entirely. I made a simple framed art about it. I chose not to make it ornate cause it's the words that matter more, right?

Hope you guys take time today and think about your personal statement and if you're like me, make something crafty to remember it. :)

have a great day,
Grace

The purpose of my life

Ok so before anything else, let me warn you that this post is not gonna talk about events, nor a crafty post, but it's something that I thought I needed to share about my beliefs.
Lately I've been feeling a little confused as to what I need to focus my attention on. There have been some great opportunities finally taking shape with regards to my personal goals and didn't know if I should take the next step. Take that commitment to sacrificing more.
I've been asked to stay at Charlotte Russe so now I'm a regular "part timer". With everything that I'm learning there I had a small, itty bitty idea that I want to be a manager when time comes. An idea that wasn't laughed at by my current managers who (to my surprise) was willing to show me the ropes right away. With this new goal, I would need to have to work one sunday a month and will have to be more flexible with my schedule. The question now is that- am I willing to make the sacrifice of being away from my family more and bending my personal/spiritual principles?
After some thought and advice seeking conversations with wise people around me (I'm indeed truly blessed) I've come to the conclusion that no success is gonna be "sweet" if there is failure in my home.
As an LDS, I get to visit a few ladies in my church area once a month. Chat with them and how they're doing plus share an inspired message straight from our leaders. Although I am the one sharing the message to the ladies, I feel it is always me who benefits the most from these articles. Such is this month's message, I felt it could've not come at a better time for me.
Here's the link to the entire article/message if you wanna read- http://www.lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=55f776978ac17110VgnVCM100000176f620a____&hideNav=true
And my favorite part is this quote from Julie B. Beck, Relief Society general president:
“Female roles did not begin on earth, and they do not end here. A woman who treasures motherhood on earth will treasure motherhood in the world to come, and ‘where [her] treasure is, there will [her] heart be also’ (Matthew 6:21).
So to end my kinda corny post, here's me and my "treasures" a few months ago, goofing around with my camera, the self timer and a tripod.



Nothing is BETTER that this!!!

Have a great day,
Grace

Post Christmas with family.....

my family (DeLeons) had a post Christmas, pre New Year's get together last Sunday. We usually go to their house on Christmas day but since this year Mom had to work we just moved it to the Sunday afterwards.
Mom had LOADS of food for us. The maid dish was the crackling pork that according to my brother Gary is the "artery-clogging" dish. Good stuff though, especially with his homemade soy sauce-vinegar concoction. Hmmm yummy!


Here's the whole gang getting their grubs on! I turned it into b&w cause of all the noise and bad lighting in the picture.


And of course we were able to open up christmas gifts from them. You see mom here being generous.


Marcus, Amanda and Maddie all got some cool clothes. Me, Rica and Alelli got a shirt that was similar to each other. Mom got it for us. We also got some cash. Way to go mom! *wink*

And finally, Lola and Marcus showing off what he got from them. Way cool, a power ranger! See even if Santa forgot to bring it, he knew you'll still get it from somebody else.


The one thing I was bummed about was that Mom neglected to inform my brothers that we were still planning on doing our gift exchange this year. We ended up not having it cause nobody was prepared (except me of course). Instead, we just gave our gifts to mom and dad. It turned out good cause I got a punch bowl which went to mom and Mitch brought three packs of trail mix which went to dad. I learned a lesson though, everybody's counting on ME to remind them about our exchange. Next year we'll all be better. :)

Have a great day,
Grace

Calendar ideas

Ok so this post will be a crafty one......

It's a new year and that means new calendars. Now I know it's easier to just use the free ones you get from work or the dollar ones you can get at the store but you know me, if it aint pretty I don't use it! Hehehehehe.

So the first one is a pocket calendar. Although cuteness is a factor with all my projects, I also first think of function. With this book I wanted a small, compact one that can easily fit in my purse (which is usually small to medium size). I made the book from scratch with a tutorial I learned from CraftTV weekly webisode. If you're into papercrafting, watching webisodes and tutorials is a must. You always learn something new. Here's the link to it- http://www.crafttvweekly.com/player.html?wid=113



I used up leftover stuff from the Basic Grey Blush line. I had this half flower for a long time and decided to use it up too.


Made the tabs by punching 1" circles and cutting them in half then stapling them to the edge of the pages.


The actual calendar template was made in microsoft word. I adhered a small white envelope in the front, incase I need to slip in some paperwork later on. Also added a ribbon bookmark (again from my old but goodie stash) then bought a small pen to finish it off.


*one thing I forgot to add that I will now incorporate is a pack of small post-its in there incase I need to write something down. I think my book is thick enough that it can manage it. :)

And then next one is a wall calendar. I got this plain alterable calendar at target in the dollar bin area in October. So wanted to do this one for a long time and finally had the time to make it.


My goal for this one was to make a page for each month that I can easily pull out at the end of the year and just put pictures in. This (premaking pages) is a great way to make sure you have a completed book by the end of the year.


Each month's page, of course, coincided with that month's theme and had pretty much the same sketch but tilted in different angles. I also used up a lot of my themed stuff that I've been saving for a while.


This is how the calendar looked when it's all closed up. It gotten thick.


So there, two projects that hopefully will inspire somebody. :)

Have a great day,
Grace

Happy New Year

Hi everybody, just poppin in here to wish us all a Prosperous 2008. May all our resolutions and goals all be fulfilled and accomplished.

Today my family are all doing there own thing. Kinda irritated by that but Mitch and Amanda both had something else they're doing. But I'm not letting this ruin my day so I will just do something fun with the kiddos. Maybe take them to the park so they can ride their bikes while I take pics. That should be fun!

I told you a few posts ago that I won a contest at Addicted Scrappers.com and that made me their January Guest designer. I was soooo lucky that I happen to pick the right month to win cause the kit is uber cute!!! KI Memories Pop Culture line is sooo fun!!!

Here's the pic of the line

And here's what I did with it

Layout #1 Sibling Love

A tip to share with matting a 12x12 pattern paper with cardstock. You would think that I trimmed the pattern paper a little and just glued it onto a whole 12x12 cardstock. That's the idea but if you think about it, there's about 95% of the cardstock that is wasted cause it's behind the pattern paper. My trick to this, I cut out a 10x10 box in the middle the cardstock before I stick the paper on top of it. This way I can still use this block for other projects. :)

Layout#2 A Tender Moment

With this layout I played with the black and white paper and colored in randomnly some of the flowers with pink and green to coordinate with my picture. In the kit there were these cool American craft vinyl letter stickers that I wanted to use but they were red. So I used it as a stencil instead sticking it on my cardstock, lightly penciling it in and taking it off. Then cutting it and erasing the pencil marks after. I added some black outlining so they'll pop out of the page too.

Layout #3 "27"

-PULLED OUT FOR PUBLICATION-

With this page I just wanted to talk a little about how I celebrated my last birthday. I went shopping with my sister Gem that day and so I kept some of the reciepts from that trip and made my own little pocket to house them. I used the number die cut paper for my title, cutting out the specific numbers that I needed. BTW this paper is sooo cool! There's so many possibilities for it.

Project: Photo card

The inspiration for this card came from the bubble quote felt embellishment that came in the kit. I thought that would be fun to house my card sentiment. I've never really worked with photo cards before but have seen them done so when I went through my stast of miscellaneous photos and found this of Marcus I knew I had to use it.

So there's my sharing for today. Remember to stop by the website if you have time to see more creations made with this kit. Here's the link- http://addictedscrappers.com/

You guys have a great rest of the day,

Grace

random stories and lots of pics.....

So sorry for not updating this blog for a while now. Just got a lot of things on my plate. Thankfully I'm not too busy with work that I actually get sometime on here to post what's been happening in our family lately.

There's so many things that've happened since the last entry so I apologize now for the randomness of this post.

1. Last week was a totally crazy week at work for me. Having to function with just about 5 hours of sleep didn't make me a happy camper. You're lucky to not be in my household. LOL. But thankfully things have slown down a little so I have some much needed quiet time.

2. My hours was way too crazy that it left me and Mitch no or little time to really spend time together so on the only day that I wasn't working (friday) we decided to go on a date. How sweet! We ate at Wood Ranch Grill. Sharing a big plate of BBQ beef rib and a rib eye steak. Yummy! The clam chowder was delicious too!!! The best part of it all, since it was divided into two, we didn't stuff ourselves too much. A great way to eat out!

After the dinner, we watched the movie "I am legend" of Will Smith. My opinion on the movie, good but scary. Way too scary to be a Will Smith movie. Too many zombie looking people. Haunted me for a while, it was even in my dreams the past couple of days. I thought the ending was a little disappointing and the dog died!!! Just not fair.

3. The following morning we had our breakfast with Santa at church. I didn't have any major role in the activity (which is good in a way) so I was able to enjoy the party. Of course I can't leave my camera at home so I towed it with me and all of a sudden it came handy cause I was asked to take pics of all the kids while they sat on Santa's lap. Here's Marcus and Santa. Maddie refused to sit on him. She did however tell him she wanted a doll. Cute!

4. So because of my crazy schedule we didn't get to do some of our annual christmas family traditions like visiting the temple to see all the lights or make our gingerbread house. We did manage to bake gingerbread men and then decorate them. Mind you the baking took place one day and then the decorating after about three days. Please cut me some slack, it was really hard to pull myself together to do it all at once. LOL.Here's some of the pics of that. I'm just looking at this first pic and I'm going aaaahhhh!!! didn't realize Maddie was holding a plastic knife while I'm taking this pic. What an awful mother am I!

Here's what our finish gingerbread men look like:

Maddie's Version. All she wanted to do was cover her cookie with all the decorations. Didn't even care if the guy had a face or not. LOL.

Marcus Version. Better than our 2 year old but the funny thing with him is that the decorations didn't last on his cookie for more than 2 minutes cause he would put them in his mouth. Funny kid.

Amanda's Version. She did a great job eventhough the icings were tough to work with.

Mama's Version. I did one too just for fun. Dig that red licorice hair? I was trying to be creative with what we have on hand. LOL.

5. Our Christmas was good. Didn't have too much money to splurge but the kids did get some great gifts from "Santa". Here Marcus lovin his transformer toy

And with Maddie, she didn't seem to thrilled with her gift which is this kitchen set. I didn't get any nice pics of her but she is NOW enjoying it. I think the box just didn't excite her as much as the stuff inside. Makes sense!

6. I got my gift early this year, my dslr camera, so I really wasn't expecting anything but I did get some happy mail before 25th which I treated as early christmas presents too. Woohooo! I got a scrapbook tool which I won on ebay, a book I got from my credit card rewards program, a magazine and stamps I bought at a steal of a deal and the january kit for Addicted Scrappers.com . Sooooo happy today. Speaking of the scrapbook kit, I already finished my projects/layouts for it and will post them here and at their website on the first of January so watch out for it. The kit is totally yummy! Chock full of KI memories Pop culture line.

7. And finally just a recent photo of me. The color is awful but I like it. Mitch took this while we were at Wood Ranch Grill having our dinner. I think he did an awesome job making me look pretty. *wink*. Gem, see my earrings? got that at Charlotte. Cool huh!

So that's it for now. I have a few calendar projects I wanna share but will do that probably tomorrow so watch out for that too. Oh and if you check this blog for crafty ideas, I need your opinions on what you want me to start posting in 2008. I'm not doing my monthly kit so I'll have some free time (I hope so) to venture into something else. Any comments will be greatly appreciated. Did you guys like the weekly project posting? Do you want that to continue on a weekly, monthly or bi monthly basis? Would you like tutorials too? Let me know okay.

Thanks for reading my long post. You guys have a fun and safe new year.

Grace